Brynn Grimley writes:
Incumbent County Commissioner Josh Brown has a third challenger in his bid for re-election to the Kitsap County Board of Commissioners — and he’s faced off against this challenger before.
Central Kitsap resident and native Wally Carlson has stated his intent to run against Brown, and recently filed with the Public Disclosure Commission. Last week Republican challenger Abby Burlingame announced her intent to run.
Saying he still thinks county government is heading in the wrong direction, Carlson chose to run “because county government has become even less transparent, less accountable, more wasteful and has continued to strangle private property rights,” he said in an e-mail.
Compared to his previous election run, Carlson says this time around he has four or five points he plans to stick to throughout the campaign. Still claiming himself to be “no politician,” Carlson said he has “more definition” this time about how he’d like to see the county run.
He’d like to see a performance audit of the county’s various departments — especially Public Works and the Department of Community Development, he said. Once the audits are complete, he wants to see the results analyzed and changes made from the bottom up instead of top down, he said.
Carlson hasn’t decided yet what party he will run under. Currently he’s listed as “other” on the PDC website. Four years ago he ran as a Democrat, but this time he’s hoping to appeal to more of the property rights crowd, he said. He’s thinking he’ll run as a “rogue conservative Democrat,” he said.
Carlson still lives in Central Kitsap with wife of roughly 21 years Vicki. They have five children, one who still lives at home.
Carlson, 63, graduated from Central Kitsap High School in 1965 and received his bachelor’s degree from Central Washington University in 1970. He owns Wally’s Design Works, a custom home/design business. Four years ago he and wife Vicki were working on marketing a novel Carlson spent eight years writing. He’s since published the book, “Annie’s Second Wind”, and has been speaking to area book clubs.
I wrote about Carlson back in September 2006 when he was running for the same position. That story is here.
